7 ms·

I can't make myself outraged about rich people throwing money at each other. If there was no art, they'd find another excuse. It's not like that money would go

I can't make myself outraged about rich people throwing money at each other. If there was no art, they'd find another excuse. It's not like that money would go to saving lives. I'm also not outraged about few artists making a living from all this money flying around. Artists aren't entitled to rich people's money, it's a side effect of the game. The only thing I'm outraged about is when the elite starts foisting ugly art on the poor, by putting it in public squares and government museums and textbooks. No matter how advanced your taste is, it's a brute fact that the poor don't enjoy ugly art. So these actions amount to taxing the poor in favor of the elite, which is immoral.

bfuller 9y ago
The high priced art market definitely has negative effects on culture. When something is sold for $100m it stops being about whatever the art represents and just becomes about how expensive it is.
watwat1 9y ago
How do you know the poor don’t enjoy ugly art?
- saint_fiasco 9y ago
  The art they make themselves doesn't look like high-end art.
  - matt4077 9y ago
    Almost all artists, even successful ones, spend decades in poverty and uncertainty. Yes, it is tautologically true that today's "great artists" will also be rich. But considering that the art market is far more difficult to predict than even professional sports or science, nobody would choose a career in art for financial reasons.
simonsarris 9y ago
> I can't make myself outraged about rich people throwing money at each other. If there was no art, they'd find another excuse. It's not like that money would go to saving lives. What if they're throwing money at each other so that down the line they have the plausible deniability when they, um, "donate" $10m pieces because they need a tax write-off? What if its manipulated to inflate costs for a very hilarious game of tax evasion? Is that worth any outrage?
- matt4077 9y ago
  That's not how this works... If you buy something for $10m you're out $10m. Yes, when you donate it you can write off those $10m, or present value at the day of the donation. But you're only saving the taxes on those $10m of income, so you're still down $5m (assuming a 50% tax rate). And you could just as easily donate those $10m directly, and get the same tax write-off.
  - monocasa 9y ago
    But the appraiser is part of the game too.
Feniks 9y ago
"I can't make myself outraged about rich people throwing money at each other. If there was no art, they'd find another excuse." Yep. Art was always a plaything for the rich. The Romanovs bought thousands and thousands of paintings to show how cultured they were. Every succesful Dutch merchant had to have a portrait done by Hals or Rembrandt. Italian bankers spent their entire fortunes on statues. Chinese emperors had enough porcelain made to host Beijing for a tea party.
greenhouse_gas 9y ago
>No matter how advanced your taste is, it's a brute fact that the poor don't enjoy ugly art. It seems more like an "acquired taste" thing that cultured individuals just must enjoy. Like atonal music or rhymeless poetry.
matt4077 9y ago
Considering most artists are pretty poor, the link between wealth and taste is a bit strenuous. I personally know quite a few people who have little income, but enjoy life by engaging with the kind of art you seem to dislike. Some have consciously made the decision to forgo a career, earning just enough for their minimalistic lifestyle, and spending lots of time on experiences. Others are poor against their will, yet still interested in art. So, no: it's not a "brute fact". Art isn't even measured on a scale of beauty vs. ugliness–that's "design" maybe. Good art almost always upsets some people. The art you may think of as universally appreciated was almost certainly deeply divisive when it was created. Those dutch still-lives, for example, are full of sexual innuendo, including prostitution, incest, or homosexuality. Picasso was the target of Nazi sabotage because they considered abstract art elitist. Andy Warhol was shot and almost died because his art had become some woman's paranoid obsession etc.
- cousin_it 9y ago
  Do you have an argument why making people upset (e.g. by ugliness) should be the criterion of good art?
  - matt4077 9y ago
    It's not required, obviously. But art as its commonly understood (and specifically protected in many countries' constitutions) functions as one of the mechanisms of a "civil society", much like journalism, unions, religions etc. In that sphere, i. e. politics (broadly), there are no crazy new inventions that make everyone happy. Science can find a cure for AIDS and nobody will complain. But politics is to some degree a zero-sum game, where a finite amount of "power" can only redistributed. Almost any change will therefore have opponents: the sexual revolution frustrated catholics, #metoo unearthed buried guilt etc. "Ugliness" really doesn't play into it. Every city has places far uglier than any piece of publicly displayed art I can think of. More often, it's the actual idea that freaks people out: The holy Mother Maria spanking the infant Jesus[0] is not too bad on the eye, but it's a really strange idea[0] (From the 1920, by the way–shock value isn't a new idea). The Nazis hated Picasso not (just) for his Guernica, but because they abhorred uncertainty, subjectivity, and doubt. That's why they rejected his (and most other) abstract art. It's also why they really didn't like relativity and quantum physics: it's possible that they missed their chance to get the atom bomb first because they had aesthetic objections to this "strange new relativism". [0]: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2e/8b/96/2e8b9610aca3535a8d6b9fdee80b7a88.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2e/8b/96/2e8b9610aca3535a8d6b...

bfuller 9y ago

The high priced art market definitely has negative effects on culture. When something is sold for $100m it stops being about whatever the art represents and just becomes about how expensive it is.

watwat1 9y ago

How do you know the poor don’t enjoy ugly art?

saint_fiasco 9y ago
The art they make themselves doesn't look like high-end art.
- matt4077 9y ago
  Almost all artists, even successful ones, spend decades in poverty and uncertainty. Yes, it is tautologically true that today's "great artists" will also be rich. But considering that the art market is far more difficult to predict than even professional sports or science, nobody would choose a career in art for financial reasons.

simonsarris 9y ago

> I can't make myself outraged about rich people throwing money at each other. If there was no art, they'd find another excuse. It's not like that money would go to saving lives. What if they're throwing money at each other so that down the line they have the plausible deniability when they, um, "donate" $10m pieces because they need a tax write-off? What if its manipulated to inflate costs for a very hilarious game of tax evasion? Is that worth any outrage?

matt4077 9y ago
That's not how this works... If you buy something for $10m you're out $10m. Yes, when you donate it you can write off those $10m, or present value at the day of the donation. But you're only saving the taxes on those $10m of income, so you're still down $5m (assuming a 50% tax rate). And you could just as easily donate those $10m directly, and get the same tax write-off.
- monocasa 9y ago
  But the appraiser is part of the game too.

Feniks 9y ago

"I can't make myself outraged about rich people throwing money at each other. If there was no art, they'd find another excuse." Yep. Art was always a plaything for the rich. The Romanovs bought thousands and thousands of paintings to show how cultured they were. Every succesful Dutch merchant had to have a portrait done by Hals or Rembrandt. Italian bankers spent their entire fortunes on statues. Chinese emperors had enough porcelain made to host Beijing for a tea party.

greenhouse_gas 9y ago

>No matter how advanced your taste is, it's a brute fact that the poor don't enjoy ugly art. It seems more like an "acquired taste" thing that cultured individuals just must enjoy. Like atonal music or rhymeless poetry.

matt4077 9y ago

Considering most artists are pretty poor, the link between wealth and taste is a bit strenuous. I personally know quite a few people who have little income, but enjoy life by engaging with the kind of art you seem to dislike. Some have consciously made the decision to forgo a career, earning just enough for their minimalistic lifestyle, and spending lots of time on experiences. Others are poor against their will, yet still interested in art. So, no: it's not a "brute fact". Art isn't even measured on a scale of beauty vs. ugliness–that's "design" maybe. Good art almost always upsets some people. The art you may think of as universally appreciated was almost certainly deeply divisive when it was created. Those dutch still-lives, for example, are full of sexual innuendo, including prostitution, incest, or homosexuality. Picasso was the target of Nazi sabotage because they considered abstract art elitist. Andy Warhol was shot and almost died because his art had become some woman's paranoid obsession etc.

cousin_it 9y ago
Do you have an argument why making people upset (e.g. by ugliness) should be the criterion of good art?
- matt4077 9y ago
  It's not required, obviously. But art as its commonly understood (and specifically protected in many countries' constitutions) functions as one of the mechanisms of a "civil society", much like journalism, unions, religions etc. In that sphere, i. e. politics (broadly), there are no crazy new inventions that make everyone happy. Science can find a cure for AIDS and nobody will complain. But politics is to some degree a zero-sum game, where a finite amount of "power" can only redistributed. Almost any change will therefore have opponents: the sexual revolution frustrated catholics, #metoo unearthed buried guilt etc. "Ugliness" really doesn't play into it. Every city has places far uglier than any piece of publicly displayed art I can think of. More often, it's the actual idea that freaks people out: The holy Mother Maria spanking the infant Jesus[0] is not too bad on the eye, but it's a really strange idea[0] (From the 1920, by the way–shock value isn't a new idea). The Nazis hated Picasso not (just) for his Guernica, but because they abhorred uncertainty, subjectivity, and doubt. That's why they rejected his (and most other) abstract art. It's also why they really didn't like relativity and quantum physics: it's possible that they missed their chance to get the atom bomb first because they had aesthetic objections to this "strange new relativism". [0]: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2e/8b/96/2e8b9610aca3535a8d6b9fdee80b7a88.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2e/8b/96/2e8b9610aca3535a8d6b...